Monday, March 12, 2007

Chinese and Japanese intelligence are from cautious to suspicious about the diplomatic rapprochement between the Bush administration and North Korea. After years of acrimony between the Bush neo-cons and Pyongyang there are strong indications that Washington will soon normalize relations with the reclusive North Korean Communist government. It is no secret that the Bush administration and North Korean-born religious cult leader Sun Myung Moon have close ties. In fact, a number of Moon's Unification Church members hold high office in the Bush administration, incluidng the State Department. Moon has extensive financial interests in North Korea, including holdings in the hotel, automotive manufacturing, and shipping sectors. It is also unclear what role the new UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon (no relation to Sun Myung Moon, but non-committal about his non-denominational Korean Christian links in Korea) may have had in the Washington-Pyongyang rapprochement.

Beijing and Tokyo suspicious about Bush-North Korea rapprochement.

What has Beijing and Tokyo worried are the ties between Sun Myung Moon's organization and the Falun Gong movement in China and the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan. The Aum cult has attempted to acquire weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, from North Korea. In 1995, it launched a deadly sarin attack on Tokyo's subway system. There are also links between Aum and the Russian-Israeli mafia, especially relating to the smuggling of chemical and biological weapons, including VX and hydrogen cyanide. The Falun Gong is considered a major subversive organization by Beijing, which fears it has a number of adherents inside the Communist Party.Intelligence professionals in Asia figure that there is more to the story of the Washington-Pyongyang diplomatic dance. In 2002, George W. Bush referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as a "pygmy," a racial epithet usually applied to the Twa people of central Africa.

"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell

“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano